80A - JT PUBLIC HRG-320 WEST FOURTH

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Historic Resource Impacts Courthouse Lofts Project 320 West Fourth Street Santa Ana, California building's party wall. While the gap is not a common feature of the area, the spacing between facades is very narrow and does not interrupt the continuous reading of the frontage along the south side of Fourth Street. A gap for a passageway or courtyard is not unusual in other urban commercial areas and in this location, provides a full glimpse of the exposed side wall of the Semi-Tropic Hotel. The understated overall fayade treatment will provide a more neutral influence along the street, without competing with the many older storefronts and allowing more decorative buildings such as the West End Theater to continue to stand out. The proposed building will have party walls on its east and west sides. These walls are typical, un-fenestrated party walls. In the proposed building several stories of unadorned party walls will be visible. This condition is not without precedent in the Historic District. In fact, the exposed party wall of the adjacent Semi-Tropic Hotel was used for advertising and this feature has become a historic character-defining feature (and one which the proposed building is partially designed around). The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation state that new construction should not destroy historic materials or features that characterize the property. Since the proposed project is sited on vacant property, no historic materials or features exist on site. However, the "ghost" billboard, layers of paint from previous advertising (Photograph 15) remains on the west elevation of the upper floor of the party wall of the Semi-Tropic Hotel, the building sited adjacent to the east of the subject property. This feature has been identified as a character-defining feature in the 2001 Survey Update of the Semi-Tropic Hotel. Rather than having the street fayade of the proposed Courthouse Lofts run from the two side lot lines, it is stepped back at the upper stories at the east lot line. This feature was designed to pull the proposed building away from the ghost billboard. As a result, a portion of the ghost billboard will remain visible. The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation states that new additions and adjacent or related new construction will be undertaken in a matter that, if removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the historic property and its environment would be unimpaired. The Courthouse Lofts project is an in-fill project within the Historic District. As such it can be removed in the future (unless, of course, after 50 years it is considered to be a contributing building to the Historic District). If demolition would be undertaken in the future, the demolition would have to take care to protect all adjacent contributing historic buildings. The CEQA Guidelines state that a substantial adverse change in significance would occur if the proposed project would cause demolition or materially alter in an adverse manner the physical characteristics of the historical resource that convey its historical significance and that justify its inclusion in, or Kaplan Chen Kaplan 13 April 20, 2006 80A-92